Even that large and substantial body
of well-bred, upper and middle-class women to whose
dispassionate, matronly sense of the traditional proprieties this
relation of status commends itself as fundamentally and eternally
right-even these, whose attitude is conservative, commonly find
some slight discrepancy in detail between things as they are and
things as they should be in this respect. But that less
manageable body of modern women who, by force of youth,
education, or temperament, are in some degree out of touch with
the traditions of status received from the barbarian culture, and
in whom there is, perhaps, an undue reversion to the impulse of
self-expression and workmanship -- these are touched with a sense
of grievance too vivid to leave them at rest.
In this "New-Woman" movement -- as these blind and
incoherent efforts to rehabilitate the woman's pre-glacial
standing have been named -- there are at least two elements
discernible, both of which are of an economic character. These
two elements or motives are expressed by the double watchword,
"Emancipation" and "Work." Each of these words is recognized to
stand for something in the way of a wide-spread sense of
grievance. The prevalence of the sentiment is recognized even by
people who do not see that there is any real ground for a
grievance in the situation as it stands today.
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